Islamic Books - Page 3

Avicena Y El Relato Visionario / Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (Paidos Orientalia) (Spanish Edition)

Henry Corbin

Amazon Price: $11.01 List Price: $12.95 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Ediciones Paidos Iberica Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $11.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> World -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Foreign Language Nonfiction -> Spanish
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General

Social and Historical Change : An Islamic Perspective (Contemporary Islamic Thought. Persian Series)

Murtaza Mutahhari, Hamid Algar

List Price: $18.95 By: Mizan Press Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $93.60

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Political Science -> Political Doctrines -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> General

Editorial Review:

In these two essays, the late Muslimscholar Murtaza Mutahhari examines society and history. His discussion demonstrates clearly his wide-ranging knowledge of Western as well as Eastern thought through the ages.

One of Mutahhari's principal aims is to refute historical materialism. To his mind, the theory is both invalid and incompatible with Islam, despite published views of some Muslim intellectuals who cite sacred texts to support it. Mutahhari explains exactly where they misread the Qur'an and refers to numerous other verses as he argues the Marxism, dialectical materialism, and historical materialism are Western theories totally at odds with vitually every facet of Islamic thought.

Iranian Islam: The Concept of the Individual

Nader Ahmadi, Fereshteh Ahmadi

Amazon Price: $127.95 List Price: $127.95 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: Palgrave Macmillan Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $127.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Law -> Legal History -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Islamic
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Islam -> Sufism -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Stimulating, but not wholly convincing, 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a well researched and stimulating book that very thoroughly explains why there is no concept of the individual in Iran and the impact this has on society, politics,and the law. This is very important because as the West dialogues with Iran, people need to understand the Iranian way of seeing things.

But the book is not wholly convincing. It was especially frustrating that there was no historial record regarding the origins of Sufism. For a general reader like myself I wanted to know who the first Sufis were, I wanted some statistics, I wanted to know when they were recognised as being a separate group. I also wanted to know what their relationship to the Dervishes is. The writers explained the teaching of Sufism very well: but I didn't undersand how it operated at street level.

At times to the generalisations stretched too far. So the writers argue that because everyone in the East generally believes in the unity of existence they are more tolerant of other religions. So what about all the Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims who hacked each other to death during the partition of India? What about the Muslim law of apostasy? Again the theory was logical, but the street evidence wasn't so convincing.

And finally it was little long winded. There are some really illuminating points in this book, but the authors take their time to get to them.

Editorial Review:

There is a discrepancy between the dominant conceptions of the status and role of the individual prevailing in modern Western ways of thinking, on the one hand, and, the Iranian ways of thinking on the other. This book examines the significance of the concept of the individual in the thinking of Iranians from theological and philosophical as well as socio-political and historical perspectives. The author establishes that the mystical dimension of Islamic thought, the divine nature of Islamic law and the mode of relationship between ruler and ruled in combination counteracted the growth of concern for the individual self in Iranian thought.

The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi (Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs)

Amazon Price: $14.95 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $14.94

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> World -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

This volume consists of nine essays on the political teaching of such Muslim philosophers as al-Kindi and al-Razi, as well as the more familiar al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, lbn Bâjjah, lbn Tufayl, and Averroes. It makes an important contribution to the study of Islamic philosophy, which has thus far emphasized the metaphysical and illuminationist doctrines of Islamic, and especially Iranian, philosophy, Muhsin Mahdi's exploration of how political questions are addressed by the philosophical tradition is perhaps his most important contribution to medieval Islamic studies. It is thus fitting that this book, intended to honor him on his sixty-fifth birthday, focuses exclusively on his specialty, and that these original essays are written by scholars who completed their post-graduate training under his supervision.

This book brings to light the political teaching of philosophers, who are usually considered totally apolitical. Responding to a long-recognized need, and charting a revolutionary course for future scholarship, it will appeal to students and scholars as well as to general readers seeking clarity about what lies behind current Islamic politics. Above all, this volume will be welcomed for its presentation of previously ignored material about particular thinkers and its rigorous analyses of key texts in Islamic philosophy.

Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute over Al-Ghazali's "Best of All Possible Worlds"

Eric L. Ormsby

List Price: $49.50 By: Princeton Univ Pr Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $149.21

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> World -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General AAS

The Wisdom of the Mystic East: Suhrawardi and Platonic Orientalism (Suny Series in Islam)

John Walbridge

Amazon Price: $54.50 List Price: $54.50 Usually ships in 3 to 4 weeks By: State University of New York Press Amazon Marketplace: 6 new & used starting at $43.12

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> World -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

An expert on the thought if medieval Islamic philosopher Suhrawardi argues that philosophers have romanticized this work as a revival of oriental wisdom.

Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination

Amyn B. Sajoo

Amazon Price: $48.31 List Price: $59.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: I. B. Tauris Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $44.30

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> World -> Islamic
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

How does Islam engage with the idea of the modern and with the contemporary world? How is Muslim tradition to be reconciled with a world in continuous flux and change? These questions lie at the heart of current discussions of the Islamic faith and of its doctrines, beliefs and practices. Engaging directly with such questions, this important volume discusses such key themes as identity and citizenship, piety and protest and music and modes of dress. Muslim as well as non-Muslim scholars explore how religiosity and tradition may both have an active role to play in the unfolding of what we understand of as "the modern." Modernity is commonly portrayed as a break with traditionalism: and as a marriage to the secular. Yet the core values at stake--from the ethos of intellectualism to the pluralism of civic culture--have roots in diverse civilizations, and certainly in those of Islam. A vital theme in the book is the role played by the ethical imagination in expressions of the civil determined by a diversity of Qur’anic understandings. This role is important in practices of civil society and citizenship, in grappling with new technologies, and in the challenges posed by political violence. Since 9/11, the West's failure to come to grips with plural modernities has reinforced simplistic assumptions about a "clash of civilizations." Fresh perspectives are offered here on what it is to be both modern and Muslim, mindful of the multiple narratives that inform both identities.

A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy

Oliver Leaman

Amazon Price: $89.95 List Price: $89.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Polity Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $59.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Eastern -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Islamic

Editorial Review:

Islamic philosophy represents one of the most important philosophical traditions in the world.

The World of Ibn Tufayl: Interdisciplinary Studies on Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science)

Amazon Price: $102.50 List Price: $102.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Brill Academic Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $102.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> World -> Islamic
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Interior Design -> General
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Interior Design -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

The World of Ibn Tufayl consists of ten essays by scholars in different fields in Arab-Islamic studies on Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan, one of the most extraordinary works of medieval Arabic literature, and a text with important dimensions in social and intellectual history, literature, mysticism, philosophy, medicine and science. Most of the essays were presented at a groundbreaking conference at the Wellcome Institute in London, which marked the first attempt at a critical assessment of any medieval Arabic text by drawing together scholars from widely varying fields. The studies cast light on numerous aspects of social and intellectual life in North Africa and Spain in medieval Islamic times, and explore important aspects of the textual intercommunication between author and audience.

Abu Ya'qub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary (Ismaili Heritage)

Paul E. Walker

Amazon Price: $82.50 List Price: $82.50 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: I. B. Tauris Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $34.94

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Middle East -> General
Subjects -> History -> Middle East -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> World -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Al Sijistani, Neoplatonism and Ismaili doctrine 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Al Sijistani was a leading visionary during the Ismaili Fatimid period. This period was marked by a strong scientific spirit, a rational approach to the universe and a markedly humanistic view of mankind's key place in it. Al Sijistani was among the group of thinkers who coopted both rationalism and the philosophical sciences and answered that religious revelation reflected not merely a separate realm, but the whole of knowledge. Hence reason or the intellect was accepted as a valid source of Islamic understanding. Al Sijistani in fact argues that intellect can never be overconsumed, but thrives on being spent. Learning in a variety of ways improves the soul, giving it strength by adding to its share of intellect.
In reviewing this book,clearly the most interesting aspect of al Sijistani's thought is his combination of Neoplatonic ideas and Ismaili doctrine. This book is in contrast with others on the Ismaili movement that tend to focus on the mystical (batin) aspects of the faith. I have read this book several times and really enjoyed reading it because of its rational approach to the Ismaili faith. I was quite surprised by the sound,readily defensible, theoretical foundation that he was able to build for central and critical issues of Ismaili doctrine.

Editorial Review:

Paul E. Walker looks at this important missionary of the tenth century from a fresh perspective. Though long neglected by historians of Islamic philosophy, al-Sijistani's recently recovered writings establish him both as a philosopher and as an exponent of the intellectual understanding of Islam. The old problem of the meaning of science and religion and their interaction as reflected in the thought of an Ismaili author from the early Islamic period is now interpreted within the framework that brings together ideas and obscure doctrines surviving only piecemeal from medieval Arabic books and treatises. This book provides a coherent overview of al-Sijistani's contributions as a thinker.